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To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

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Our year with Richard Glossip

This is an account of the campaign to save the life of Richard Glossip. It provides both a timeline of the events over the past year when Richard came close to being executed not once but three times, and also an insight into our work at the Ministry Against the Death Penalty.

In January 2015 Sister Helen received a letter from Richard Glossip. He was on death row in Oklahoma, convicted of the murder for hire of Barry van Treese. The man who committed the actual murder, Justin Sneed, had escaped the death penalty and earned himself a life sentence by claiming that Richard had paid him to do it. There was little other evidence.

Richard had received a stay of execution in October 2014 after the state had severely botched the execution of Clayton Lockett. He told Sister Helen his execution had now been rescheduled for January 29, that he had put her name down as his spiritual advisor and “would she mind” being there as a witness at his execution. Sister Helen phoned Richard and after talking to him agreed to be there for him.

In our work, “being there” does not merely mean being present for an execution. It means standing side by side to fight for life. And that’s what we did with Richard. We found pro bono lawyers for him, raised funds to hire investigators, and began a social media campaign to spotlight the many flaws in his conviction and the likelihood of his innocence of the crime. We talked to representatives of the Vatican to alert them to Richard’s plight. We held media conferences, partnered with the local Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and launched a petition drive in conjunction with Susan Sarandon to raise public awareness and to place pressure on Governor Mary Fallin to grant Richard a stay. Through our media connections and social media campaign we attracted national and international attention, including from Dr. Phil who dedicated an entire TV show to Richard’s case, and from Richard Branson of Virgin, who helped to inform the UK public and who also provided funds for advertisements in Oklahoma newspapers.

Richard Glossip was not executed in January. One day before the scheduled execution, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear Richard’s petition on the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. In a rare move – presumably because of heightened public scrutiny – the State’s Attorney General had joined with Richard’s lawyers in petitioning the Court to hear the appeal.

In the lead up to the Supreme Court hearing, we used social media and Sr. Helen’s speaking engagements to educate people about Richard’s case and the use of lethal injection in executions. We joined forces with MoveOn to maximize the impact of the petition to be delivered to Governor Fallin (eventually over 225,000 signatures) and to coordinate our social media campaigns. We encouraged people to phone the governor, and thousands responded.

Richard Glossip

In June the Supreme Court’s decision in Glossip v. Gross came down against Richard. But in a striking dissent, Justice Breyer, with a concurrence from Justice Ginsberg, said it was time the Supreme Court revisited the constitutionality of the death penalty as a whole. In a separate dissent, Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsberg and Kagan, pointed out the convoluted logic used by the majority in reaching its decision. The majority decision faulted the petitioners for failing to prove the availability of an alternative “less cruel” means for their own executions. As Justice Sotomayor observed: “Simply stated, the ‘Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments.’ The Court today, however, would convert this categorical prohibition into a conditional one. A method of execution that is intolerably painful—even to the point of being the chemical equivalent of burning alive—will, the Court holds, be unconstitutional if, and only if, there is a ‘known and available alternative’ method of execution.”

Following this decision, Oklahoma set September 16 as the third execution date for Richard. MADP continued applying pressure to get Governor Fallin to grant a stay and give Richard’s lawyers more time to find new evidence. When the Governor’s office issued a series of 11 tweets justifying the Governor’s implacable opposition to a stay, we responded with a series of carefully researched answers, tweeted and retweeted between Susan Sarandon’s and Sister Helen’s accounts. This proved to be a particularly effective tactic and essentially closed down any further responses from the Governor. It also seemed to be a turning point in the media coverage in Oklahoma, which went from generally supporting Richard’s execution to raising questions about his guilt.

Cell LL, the isolation cell adjacent to Oklahoma's death chamber

On September 16, three hours before the scheduled execution, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals issued another stay, this one for two weeks, so it could consider issues raised by Richard’s legal team. When it reviewed the case the conservative OCCA unsurprisingly decided against Richard, although it was a tightly split decision with very strong dissents.

And so Richard received a fourth execution date: September 30. By this time he had spent weeks in the death block where the lights are kept on 24 hours a day.

On the night before his execution, from 8pm onwards Richard was denied all visits, isolated in a cold cell, denied music or reading material because it might “upset him”, and left to await his execution. On September 30, the execution hour of 3pm came and went with no word and no execution. Sitting stripped to his underwear, Richard waited. The witnesses, including Sister Helen and family members of the murder victim, also waited. Outside was a media scrum, while online millions of people followed his fate. MADP used Facebook and Twitter to keep people around the world informed, as we had done throughout our involvement with Richard.

Almost an hour after the scheduled execution time, Governor Fallin issued Richard a 37-day stay. The Governor said the stay was being issued because the Department of Corrections had been supplied with potassium acetate instead of the required potassium chloride as the third drug in the triple cocktail.

This official reason for the stay raised many questions. When did the Department discover the drug error? Had it known of the mix up in advance and been planning to proceed with the execution regardless, but baulked because of the public spotlight? How could it not know it had the wrong drug when they had prepared for Richard’s third execution two weeks prior and the execution process is meticulously rehearsed ahead of time?

In the coming days, the news broke that the Oklahoma DOC had used the same wrong drug, potassium acetate, earlier that year when it had executed Charles Warner, but had kept that information secret. It was only through a freedom of information request by a newspaper that the mistake became public. Potassium acetate is used as a preservative and in embalming. Charles Warner, as he was dying, cried out “It feels like acid” and “My body is on fire”.

Oklahoma was forced to request an indefinite stay for Richard and two others awaiting execution on Oklahoma’s death row in order to examine the problems in its execution procedures.

So now, at the end of 2015, Richard remains on death row without a scheduled execution date. The efforts of many have helped to save his life, so far. And while thousands of people have learned more about the injustice and brutality of our system of capital punishment through the campaign about Richard’s case and some new and influential allies have offered their resources to increase the momentum towards abolition, the terrible impact of what is clearly a process of torture have left their marks on Richard.

Source: Source: Death Penalty Discourse, A newsletter by Sister Helen Prejean, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, December 2015

Are we at the tipping point?

Dear friends,

My last letter to you began with the words: "Richard Glossip is scheduled to die at 3pm this Wednesday." I wrote that in September. Today, as I write this to you, Richard is still alive and his execution has been postponed indefinitely, as have all other executions in Oklahoma.

Sister Helen Prejean

It was a near thing. They had isolated and stripped Richard, preparing him for his death. The appointed hour of his execution came and went with no word. And then the announcement: a stay from Governor Fallin. The lethal triple cocktail they had prepared for him contained potassium acetate - a chemical used in embalming! - instead of potassium chloride to stop his heart. They had the wrong drug. It was to emerge in the days to come that they had used that same drug in the execution of Charles Warner earlier in the year, Charles Warner who as they pumped the drugs into him cried out "My body is on fire." So Oklahoma, which had been one of the killingest states in recent years, has joined the long list of states with executions indefinitely on hold.

The statistics make it seem like most of the nation participates in executions, with 31 of the states still having capital punishment on the books. But those statistics mask the fact that only a handful of states perform all the executions. Four states have a moratorium; in 17 states executions are on hold because of botched executions or problems obtaining drugs; and of the 31 states where executions are legal, only six states performed executions this year, with Texas executing more than twice as many as any other state.

Even Texas, with its well-oiled machinery of death, seems to be losing heart when it comes to killing its own citizens. Ten last year, thirteen this year. That's down by three-quarters from 2000 when the death machine was seemingly unstoppable. Now, this year, that machine is finally looking stoppable. In many states where executions are nominally legal, the machinery is downright rusty from lack of use.

There are plenty of reasons for this, with exonerations and botched executions gaining more and more national attention. There are also local factors, such as the Michael Morton Act passed by Texas in 2013, that made it mandatory for prosecutors to track and disclose all evidence against a defendant, not just evidence that is "material either to guilt or to punishment" as mandated by the Supreme Court way back in '63. Prosecutors are shying away from the death penalty partly because of the expense but also because there has been heightened scrutiny of how they conduct capital prosecutions.

And so, with executions and death sentences plummeting, a new reluctance from many of our political leaders to embrace a pro-death penalty stance, and with Richard still alive, I look forward to 2016 with eagerness and renewed fire. We are going to end this thing!

From the heart,

PS. I know that many groups put out an appeal for donations at Christmas time. At MADP, we have chosen not to do that. Instead, I want to encourage you to help a cause very dear to my heart: Witness to Innocence. Witness to Innocence provides a support network for death row exonerees. Its members, who between them have survived hundreds of years on death rows for crimes they did not commit, travel the country sharing their stories with legislators, the media and the public. Their voice, as exonerees, is one of the most powerful and persuasive tools in our fight to end the death penalty. I am so grateful for the courageous work they do. Click here to donate.

Source: Death Penalty Discourse, A newsletter by Sister Helen Prejean, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, December 2015

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

Organizers of an anti-death penalty coalition say they have delivered over 56,000 petition signatures to New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, urging him to sign a bill to repeal the state’s capital punishment law.
Sununu has vowed to veto the bill, saying he stands with crime victims and members of the law enforcement community.
Before presenting the signatures, the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty held a news conference Thursday where family members of murder victims spoke in favor of repealing the death penalty.
The bill was passed by the House and Senate.
It is unclear whether they have a two-thirds majority of votes in both chambers, which is needed to override vetoes. Source: The Associated Press, May 17, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

The high school junior accused of gunning down 10 students and teachers at a Santa Fe school is facing a capital murder charge - but he’ll never face the death penalty, even in Texas.
Though Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged as an adult and jailed without bond, even if he’s found guilty he can’t be sentenced to death because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And in the Lone Star State, he can’t be sentenced to life without parole as the result of a 2013 law that banned the practice for minors.
“In Texas, after the Supreme Court’s decision, they passed a law that basically says that it’s a life sentence if you’re under 18 at the time of the crime,” said attorney Amanda Marzullo, executive director of Texas Defender Services. “The Court has said that it is cruel and unusual to execute an individual who is under 18 at the time of the offense.”
The Santa Fe High School student admitted to the mass shooting that killed 10 and wounded 10 others early Friday, according to court documents.…

31 years ago, on May 20, 1987, just before midnight, I was sitting in the witness area of the Mississippi Gas Chamber watching someone die in front of me. His name was Edward Earl Johnson.
I am both sad and glad that Edward’s final two weeks, right up to his agonising death, were recorded in Paul Hamann’s extraordinary BBC documentary Fourteen Days in May. Sad, because from time to time I find myself forced to relive that horror, when I watch the film at some public event; glad, because at least Edward’s senseless death has had positive repercussions – the film inspiring many to take up the battle for people in his precarious predicament.
Yet it irks me beyond measure that people who should know better use their position of power to prognosticate that the justice system never executes the innocent. For example, in a case called Kansas v. March, in 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loudly proclaimed that there is not “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a…

How much does the public have a right to know about how the state of Indiana executes people?
It is a question that, effectively, strikes at the heart of capital punishment. And it's the issue in a 4-year-old case in Marion Circuit Court that started with a public records request by Washington attorney A. Katherine Toomey to the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC).
"If we win ... the Indiana public will know more about one of the most consequential areas of decision making that the state of Indiana engages in," attorney Peter Racher said in an interview.
The state, however, sees it as contrary to a state law limiting what the public can see pertaining to executions. The law was controversial because of how it passed. After midnight on the final day of the 2017 legislative session, it was added to a budget bill, two pages out of 175.
"The budget is now a death penalty bill," Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said at the time. "There's been no public…

(CNN) - An Australian woman has been sentenced to death by hanging after a Malaysian court overturned an earlier acquittal of drug smuggling charges.
According to CNN affiliate Sky News, a three-judge panel unanimously threw out the previous ruling in 54-year-old Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto's case.
The grandmother and mother of four was arrested in December 2014 while transiting through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a flight from Shanghai to Melbourne, according to another CNN affiliate, SBS News.
She was found in possession of 1.1 kilos (2.4 lb) of crystal methamphetamine and faced a mandatory death penalty under Malaysia's draconian drugs laws.
Exposto claimed she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag and had been scammed by a boyfriend she met online.
According to SBS, Exposto's lawyers said she had gone to Shanghai to file documents in relation to her boyfriend's retirement from service in the US army. When she left China, Exposto claimed she was handed …

The lawyers fighting the death penalty ordered for a former Northmont High School student want the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider its affirmation of the sentence and scheduling of the execution.
Austin Myers' lawyers said in a motion filed this morning that they want the state's highest court to overturn the conviction and call a new trial "or in the alternative that his sentence be modified to life without parole."
Myers, 23, is still apparently the 2nd youngest on Ohio's death row 3 1/2 years after being sentenced for the murder of childhood friend Justin Back, 18, of Wayne Twp., Warren County.
Last Thursday, the court affirmed the death penalty for Myers, for the stabbing death of Back at his home outside Waynesville in January 2014.
The execution was scheduled for July 20, 2022 in the decision.
Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell was pleased with the 7-0 ruling by the state's highest court.
"The 7-0 decision is always something you like to se…

Defendant claims firefighters didn't try hard enough to extinguish blaze
The nanny responsible for killing 4 members of a family in an arson appeared in court in eastern China on Thursday to appeal her death sentence.
Mo Huanjing, nanny of the family of Lin Shengbin, pleaded guilty to starting the fire. But she said during the appeal at Zhejiang High People's Court that "the penalty in the original ruling was extremely heavy".
"The tragedy wasn't the result I wanted to see," she added. She said the efforts of firefighters were flawed. And she confessed to her offense during the initial interrogation, which could be regarded as a reason to earn a more lenient sentence.
Wu Pengbin, her lawyer, told China Daily that some firefighters and employees of the property management department of Lin's apartment attended the hearing as witnesses at his urging.
"I wanted them to show what they were doing at the time to the court, as I, with my client, thoug…

To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

Concerns about Texas' dwindling lethal injection supplies coupled with questions about the age of the drugs have some advocates wondering whether the state is prepared to humanely carry out its recent uptick in scheduled executions.
Texas currently has 8 death dates and 9 doses of its execution drug - compounded sodium pentobarbital - for use in the Huntsville death chamber. What's more, a string of contradictory records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice raises questions about whether some of those doses could be 3 years old, far older than previously reported and old enough that experts worry it could increase the chances of a "torturous" execution.
"The older the drug the greater the likelihood of a botched execution. Period," said Maurie Levin, a death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "It becomes contaminated, corrupted, impotent, and all of those things can lead to a torturous execution."
In response …

Texas executed Juan Castillo, who said he was innocent, for 2003 San Antonio murder
A Texas death row inmate was executed Wednesday — his 4th execution date in a year. Though advocates and his attorneys insisted on Juan Castillo's innocence, he lost all his fights in court and was put to death for a 2003 San Antonio murder.
Juan Castillo was put to death Wednesday evening, ending his death sentence on his 4th execution date within the year.
The 37-year-old was executed for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio.
The execution had been postponed three times since last May, including a rescheduling because of Hurricane Harvey.
Castillo's advocates and attorneys had insisted on his innocence in Garcia’s murder, pleading unsuccessfully for a last-minute 30-day stay of execution from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott after all of his appeals were rejected in the courts.
The Texas Defender Service, a capital defense group who had recently picked up Castillo’s cas…

DPN opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner. The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit organization. It is based in Paris, France.Your donations to Death Penalty News DO make a difference.